Lack of zoning laws a challenge in Houston

November 18, 2007|By Kris Hudson, The Wall Street Journal

HOUSTON — This sprawling metropolis has welcomed developers since 1836 when land speculators Augustus and John Allen founded the city by carving a 6,000-acre swath of coastal prairie into home sites sold for $1 per acre.

Now that wide-open approach has come back to haunt Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city and the only major U.S. city without zoning laws to control development. Plans to build a 23-story condominium tower among the million-dollar homes of two stately neighborhoods here has appalled affluent residents and put local politicians in the hot seat.

Angry residents have hired a lawyer to fight their cause. Houston Mayor Bill White has pledged to use "any appropriate power under law" to scale back or cancel the development. The problem is, without zoning laws to regulate land use, the city can do little to thwart the project other than apply traffic restrictions and write sternly worded letters.

"We expect to be treated equitably and in a nondiscriminatory fashion" by the city, said Matthew Morgan, president of Buckhead Investment Partners Inc., who is developing the $100 million-plus project with longtime business partner Kevin Kurtin, CEO of the company.

The condo-tower dust-up is just the latest in a string of odd situations allowed by Houston's lenient land-use rules. Rowdy cantinas, rock-crushing operations and commercial dumps sometimes pop up in residential neighborhoods. In most cities, zoning laws would prohibit an intensive commercial use, such as a fast-food restaurant, from setting up shop on a residential street. Houston, however, regulates land use mostly through deed restrictions, which are typically crafted by the developer of a subdivision and apply only to that area, dictating issues such as lot size and construction design. The latest controversy has reignited the land-use debate at a heady time for Houston, a port city of more than 2.1 million people. Mayor White, a businessman who worked in real estate, law and other industries prior to his 2003 election, doesn't see zoning as the answer to Houston's issues. "Not on my watch," he said in an interview. "I do think, as we are in a strong economy and we live closer and closer together, there will be both new development and more rules to protect our common interests. But we will respect consumer choice and not have some bureaucrat in City Hall become the taste patrol for the city."

As a fix, the mayor is proposing a new city ordinance that would allow Houston to reject proposed developments that create too much traffic on neighboring roads. Morgan and Kurtin were childhood friends raised in the very neighborhoods that now oppose them. The pair started in mortgage banking and eventually began developing multifamily projects. Last year, they bought a 1.7-acre parcel occupied by 67 outdated apartments surrounded by the pricey homes of the Southampton and Boulevard Oaks neighborhoods.

The site, originally developed as a grocery store in 1926, isn't governed by any deed restrictions.

Morgan and Kurtin then proposed a tower complex that would include 23 stories of either 187 condos or 236 apartments, a restaurant, boutique grocery store and parking for 450 vehicles. They paid the city's impact fees for the development and financed $500,000 in sewer upgrades for the project at the city's request. Their initial study of the traffic the project would generate found "no adverse impacts" on surrounding streets. Bowing to the city's demands for a smaller project isn't an option, they say. Despite the fervor of their opposition, neighbors aren't sure zoning is the answer. Houston voters have defeated proposals to implement citywide zoning three times, in 1948, 1962 and 1993.

Leslie Miller, an administrator at nearby Rice University, bought a town home adjacent to the proposed condo tower three years ago as she and her husband, Ken, sought to scale back as empty-nesters. Fearing that the condo tower would leave her town home in perpetual shadow, Miller wrote an opinion piece for the local newspapers depicting the lack of land-use controls as a "threat to Houston's very soul."

"We need to come up with some coherent way of solving this once and for all," she said.